Kevin "Blunoz" S.'s Profile

A friend and I rode the Great Allegheny Trail from Myersdale, PA down to Cumberland, MD.  It was a 33 mile ride overall, but we really enjoyed it.  Now, neither of us are Lance Armstrong wanna-bes.  We're old farts riding plain bikes.  

From Myersdale, the first 9 miles is uphill, but since it's an old railroad, it's a very gentle uphill slope.  The highlight of this part of the trip was riding across the Keystone Viaduct.  On our uphill leg, our average speed was 8.0 mph (from my GPS).

At the end of the 9 miles uphill, we arrived at the Eastern Continental Divide.  From there, it's ALL downhill all the way to Cumberland.  We overheard someone else on the trail say that on the downhill side, "you don't need pedals, all you need are brakes."  My GPS said our average speed during the downhill leg was 13 mph.

There are a few spots along the way you could get on the trail and just do the downhill portion.  We saw some families with kids doing the downhill portion, too.  As an alternative, you can ride the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad from Cumberland up to Frostburg, then ride your bikes from Frostburg 16 miles back down the hill to Cumberland.  

Lesson learned:  We had planned to stop and have lunch in Frostburg, MD.  When we arrived in Frostburg, we found there was a nice rest area for bicyclists along the side of the trail with maps of the town, park benches, bicycle racks, and port-a-potties.  Unfortunately, the path goes by at the BOTTOM of the side of the hill that Frostburg is on.  In order to go into town for lunch, we would have had to either bike or hike half a mile UP a steep hill.  We decided not to do that.  We just ate snacks that we had packed in our backpacks and continued onward to Cumberland.

The scenery was beautiful.  There were three long tunnels to go through.  Each tunnel was either short enough it didn't need to be lit up because you could see light from either side, or had installed lighting (the Big Savage Tunnel was really long but well-lit inside).

The trail is well marked with mile markers along the way so you can tell how far you are from Cumberland, MD.  The trail ends right in downtown Cumberland next to the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad train station and right where the C&O Canal Towpath begins.

We had a great time and I would love to come back here and do the downhill portion with my kids sometime.  I think we might try the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad 1-way trip up to Frostburg then ride our bikes down the hill.  

Side note:  Why do I give it 4 stars instead of 5?  Only because I try to reserve my 5 star ratings for restaurants that are truly spectacular, and I don't want to inflate my average grade with a rating for a bike trail.  :-)

A friend and I went for a 33 mile bike ride from Myersdale, PA down the Great Allegheny Trail to Cumberland, MD.  When we arrived in Cumberland, we were impressed by what a nice town it was, and we enjoyed reading about the history of the C&O Canal.

We were pretty hungry from out long ride, and there was this place called The Crabby Pig right there by the basin at the end of the C&O Canal.  I was annoyed with myself for not researching in advance what restaurants would be good for dinner in Cumberland, but we were starving and just went to the Crabby Pig because it was there.

I was very pleased with our dinner there.  Nice atmosphere?  Check!  Prompt, friendly service?  Check!  Delicious food?  Check!  No sticker shock when the bill came?  Check!  

They have both indoor and outside seating.  We sat outside so we could keep an eye on our bikes and enjoy the last of the sunshine of the day as the sun went down over the C&O canal basin.

Crabby Pig specializes in all things... well...  crab (soup, dip, soft shell, legs, salad, sandwich...) or pork (they barbecue their own pork right there on the premises.  

My friend actually had a fish sandwich.  I had the BBQ pork combo - a pulled pork sandwich, 2 ribs, cole slaw, and fries.  All were absolutely delicious.  Some of the best barbecue I've had.  The french fries were AWESOME, too.  

They had a really good looking dessert menu, but we needed to hit the road to head back home to the DC area, so we passed on dessert.  My bill came to $11 and change for the combo platter I had plus a large soda.  I certainly got my money's worth.

To find the place, it's in the little marketplace / shops area underneath the I-68 bridge very close to the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad train station.

I'm very glad we found this place for dinner and I look forward to going back someday.

We heard great things about Kevin's Cafe and probably went in with high expectations.  

The atmosphere is very... homey?  It doesn't feel like a restaurant.  It feels like you walked into somebody's home kitchen and sat down at their $50 Walmart kitchen table.  It's not fancy.  I'm NOT saying that's a BAD thing.  It's just not what I'm used to seeing in "restaurants."  I guess it makes it appear amateurish - sort of like improvising to run a cafe out of your own house.

Thumbs up for them saving us a table.  Our dinner plans at home were unexpectedly ruined by a power outage that shut off the oven while we thought dinner was cooking.  We called over to Kevin's and asked if there was a wait or if we needed reservations.  They said no, come on over.  When we got there, we found there was only one open table and other people waiting.  The hostess / waitress asked, "Are you the ones who called?  This table is for you then."  So that worked out well for us.

The place is pretty small and as I mentioned, all the tables were full.  They were obviously understaffed.  It appeared there was only one waitress handling all the tables and she was a little overwhelmed.  As a result, the service was slower than I would have liked, but what she lacked in promptness, she made up for in friendliness and making us feel at home.

The food was fantastically delicious.  I had some stuffed shrimp and a micro-brew beer I'd never heard of and both were tremendously good.  My wife really liked the crab cakes.  The kids both enjoyed their meals off the kids' menu.  

I had a hard time deciding between 3 and 4 stars for Kevin's Cafe.  I think I felt like we paid a little too much for the speed of service and the amateurish atmosphere.  I just felt Kevin's Cafe wasn't totally on par with other restaurants I have rated at 4 stars.  That being said, the food was VERY good, and it's worth giving this restaurant a try.  This was just one visit for us, so we might have hit them on an off night as far as staffing goes.  I would totally give them another try and revise my rating again later.

Forno just opened in the spot that used to be Michaelangelo's and used to be San Vito before that.  My family gave it a try for the first time tonight.  The floorplan inside is the same as it was before, but it appeared much brighter and more open inside (probably from the big mirrors on both side walls).  It was very clean and nicely decorated.  My boys always love it when there is butcher paper on the tables for them to draw, too.

The food was actually VERY good here.  They serve two types of bread - one soft and one hard more like a big crouton, and an olive spread that I loved.  My wife and I shared the caprese salad which was delicious (although very small for the price charged and provided in an odd number of slices so we couldn't just split the order in two).  I had the baked risotto sartu with mini-meatballs, peas, and hard-boiled eggs, and it was EXCELLENT.  My wife had the angel hair pasta and my kids had the pizza.  For the kids pizza, they bring mini-pizza paddles to the table with the pizza ingredients in little bowls and let the kids make their own pizza.

My primary dissatisfaction with our meal at Forno this evening was with the slowness of the service.  When we arrived, the restaurant was about 40% occupied and we were seated immediately.  We had enough time to read the menu in its entirety (new restaurant, had to read it all), and had time for both my boys to go use the restroom and come back before our waiter made his first appearance at our table.  
   We arrived at 6:41 (I remembered that part because I was concerned about how late we were feeding the kids dinner).  I didn't jot down the times at first.  We waited, ate our bread, waited, ate our appetizer, waited.  Then I started keeping track.  
   The waiter brought the kids stuff to make pizzas at 7:05, and took them away to be cooked at 7:12.  Our dinner was served at 7:25.  Not an unreasonable turnaround time from taking the kids pizzas off to the oven, but it would have been nice if they would have let the kids make their pizzas while my wife and I ate the bread and salad.
   The turnaround time on getting our to-go boxes and our check was so-so (7:37 we were done eating, 7:42 waiter asked if we needed a box, 7:45 dropped off boxes and walked off, 7:47 we asked for the check and the waiter immediately handed it over.  We left at 7:49.  
   So all in all, just over an hour for dinner isn't that bad.  I realize I have to be careful what I wish for - I'm not asking for us to rush us through the meal and kick us out the door.  At the same time though, I suspect some of the efficiencies we experienced tonight might have been due to growing pains from having just opened a new restaurant.
   There were some other minor finesse points the waiter missed such as not taking away the empty bread basket or taking away the empty bowls that held the raw ingredients the kids used to make their pizzas.
    The price was reasonable - our total bill for the four of us came to $41 (with no drinks).

     Overall, the slowness of the service and the finesse points mentioned above are what pulled my review from 4 stars down to 3 stars.  However, I am willing to give Forno another shot to see how things go after they've been open for business a while.

I organized a flat-water tubing trip on the Shenandoah River for my church.  Overall:  We had a great time floating down the river and the staff at River Riders were very friendly and easy-going.  

As the coordinator / organizer for our church, I was a little frustrated with the management of their operation.

Example 1: We tried to save time by having everyone print out, fill out, and sign the liability release forms before hand and bring them to the event that morning.  Well, everyone just brought the front page that you sign and it didn't have the back side / page 2 of the form.  Because of that, they wanted all 42 of us to initial the page 2 of the liability waiver, even though page 2 of the liability waiver very specifically says it only applies to WHITE WATER tubing, and we were going on a FLAT water trip.  So I walked around and had everyone initial page 2 of the liability waiver - minor nuisance, but not a big deal.

The thing that really irked me today was the timing of our event.  I read on the website that it should take approximately 1.5 hours, so I signed us up for a 10:30 trip to have us finish around noon in time for lunch.  My initial announcements to the church were to meet at 9:30 to get our life-jackets and orientation so we could get on the water at 10:30.  A couple of weeks later when I called to arrange payment for our group, River Riders told me that 10:30 was our check-in / gear-up / orientation time.  So I revised our church's meeting in the parking lot time to 10 a.m.  We were all there and checked in by 10:15...  and they told us our orientation would begin at 11:15.  Sheesh!  So we spent an hour standing around waiting, swatting at the gnats and other bugs hovering around hour heads in the parking lot.

We got our orientation at 11:15, but most of it was for the white-water rafters and not applicable to us going on the flat-water trip.  The lady leading the orientation told us she would do the white-water rafters' orientation first and get them started and then do ours next.  By the time we finished the orientation, got our life-jackets, and got on the bus, the bus left the parking lot at 11:41.  

We made a brief stop at the pull-out point for the bus-driver to show us that was where we needed to get out, then proceeded down to the put-in point where we got off the bus and waited in line to get our tubes and get in the water.

I started my GPS to track our trip, and according to my GPS, we got in the water at 12:10 p.m.  (That's just a little bit later than my original intended 10:30).  We got out of the water at 1:30 right as a bus left.  We got on the next bus at 2:03.  We were starving for lunch and ordered food right there at River Riders, and by the time we sat down to eat lunch it was 2:55 p.m.

Aside from the timeliness of getting us in the water, everyone in my group had a great time.

The water was warm - I'd guess around 75 (having just come from swimming in a 77 degree lake last week).  The water was always pretty shallow - I was able to stand up anytime I got out of my tube, and a few spots I scraped bottom on some shallow rocks.  There were a few sections of very light rapids that my two boys (8 and 5 years old) really enjoyed, but we were never in any real danger.

As an organizer, here are other things I learned through the experience:

- If you want to keep your group together, then don't let anybody get on the bus until your entire group is gathered and ready to get on the bus.  This applies both coming and going.  
   Going in:  After you finish the orientation, you will all file past the River Riders employees handing out the life jackets and get in line to get on the bus.  Our group got mixed in with a bunch of other people tubing that day and just got on the bus as they got their life jackets.  Then the bus was full, so that bus took off for the water while the rest of us were still getting life jackets.  The second bus didn't take the rest of us down to the water for another 10 minutes, so that put a big gap in our group right off the bat.  
   Getting out:  The same thing happened.  As people got out of the water at the pull-out point, they walked onto the bus that was parked there.  When the bus was full, it left to head back to River Riders.  Again, our group was divided across two buses.  
    This isn't necessarily a bad thing.  It's just food for thought if it's an issue like if you had scouts and had a requirement for a certain number of adult leaders per scouts.

We lost a pair of sunglasses.  I definitely recommend putting a strap on sunglasses or anything else you don't want to lose.

Double tubes available if you are taking a small child with you and don't want to let them wander off in their own tube.

Overall, in spite of the timing frustration, we had a lot of fun on the water today.  I would be interested to try this with another one of the rafting businesses around Harpers Ferry so I could compare how well they run their businesses.

This is a family favorite of ours.  It's not fancy, and it's not expensive.  It's your typical seasonal hole-in-the-wall shack type of place that sells burgers and fries, but because it's NH there's also lobster rolls and clams.  They serve up pretty good soft serve ice cream here, too.  There is ONLY outside seating and ONLY two port-a-potties at the back of the parking lot.  The service is friendly and about what you would expect from teenagers hired to man the counter for the summer.  

Note it's CASH ONLY!

Our family loves coming here for a hearty country meal that doesn't cost a lot of money.  We normally come for breakfast - pancakes, waffles, french toast, omlettes, corned beef hash, etc.  The food is fresh and delicious, and the service is prompt and friendly.  It's not very fancy - paper napkins, plastic plates and plain flatware, but it's clean and a nice homey atmosphere.

Note: They do NOT take credit or debit cards!  Cash or checks only.  They DO have an ATM machine in the foyer though.  Like I mentioned above, it's not expensive.  It's in the ballpark of $7 per person for breakfast.

They have a small kids section on the menu.  They do not offer any sort of coloring sheets or activities for kids, so you might bring a coloring book in with you if your kids need something like that.  On the bright side, the food comes quick so you won't be waiting long.  

This morning when we had breakfast there, it was pretty busy, and as a result pretty noisy inside.  My family had all just rolled out of bed, so we had bed-head and my wife made me wipe the dried druel off the side of my face after we sat down at the table in the restaurant.  We at least put on clothes before we went though.  There were other people in the restaurant still wearing their pajamas - no joke!  

My mother-in-law tells me that they have really good home-cooked meals for dinner, too - things like pot roast or meat loaf, etc.  I have not been there for dinner, but I suspect it would be good stuff based on my experiences there at breakfast.

Location Note:  The map that shows up on Yelp is WAY off.  Village Kitchen is right on Route 25, on the right hand side as you drive northbound away from Center Harbor.  If you get to the school at Blake Road in Moultonborough, then you went too far.  It's about 0.9 miles south of Blake Road (where the school is).

We've been to many children's museums across the country.  This one is not very spectacular and not something I would go out of my way to see.

However (comma), if you're like us, you probably came to the lake intent on spending a lot of time outdoors boating, swimming, hiking, biking, kayaking, etc.  So when you find yourself suck inside with pouring rain for three days straight, you will quickly find yourself going stir crazy inside your little vacation rental with no internet access or TiVO.  

In such circumstances, this children's museum is a life-saver.  It gave us an excuse to get out of the house and go do something new and different.  They kids got to run around and play with all sorts of new things.  Again, it's not fancy or high-tech, but it has several rooms of activities for kids.

It didn't take much to convince my two boys to go into this museum with me.  I mean, common, there's a WWII Sherman Tank bursting out of the brick wall facing the street!  

Inside, it's a fairly typical military history museum in terms of it being lots of static displays of historic artifacts and military memorabilia.  There isn't much hands-on for the kids to do, but the kids enjoyed walking around and looking at the stuff for a little while.  It made for a good afternoon out of the house and a nice boat ride down to Wolfeboro and back.

It's actually much bigger and much nicer than I expected.  My expectations were fairly low going into a place in the middle of rural NH.  It's a two-story place with quite a few exhibits to see.

My favorite exhibit was seeing their collection of WWII aircraft nose-art, but... uh... it's not exactly an exhibit you want to take young children to, especially if your children can READ.  "Daddy, what does it mean "Give it to her?" Daddy, why is she standing there and holding herself like that? Daddy, why are her clothes so tight?"  I'm not knocking the artwork by any means - I thought it was really cool to see it, but I quickly decided to move on to the next exhibit before my boys started asking too many questions I didn't want to answer.

In the end, I would say it was worth the price of admission and good for an hour or so of walking around inside on a hot summer day.

My two little boys love model railroads and model trains.  As a result, everyplace we go, we visit the model railroad museum if there's one to be found.  We've been to many, and this little place in Wolfeboro, NH, is a hidden gem and TOTALLY worth the price of admission.  

Please note that I hold back the 5-star ratings for only those places I've been to other businesses of the same type and can truly say THIS place is significantly above-average when compared to other similar places around the country.

It may not be very big, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in a Where's-Waldo type of fun.  The scenery around the railroad tracks is incredibly detailed.  There are lot of miniature scenes that will make you laugh.  Plus, there are a lot of things hidden around the railroad that you are challenged to find - like the miniature Superman or the miniature Indiana Jones.  Those sorts of things keep me occupied for quite a while.

For my boys though, this railroad is better than most others we have visited because there is actually a lot of hands-on stuff for them to do here.  There are buttons to push every few feet along the walkway that make something happen in the scenery - make a building light up, make smoke come out of a smoke stack, make a whistle blow, make a train run...  At a lot of other model railroad places, the boys just have to stand and watch and there are lots of "please don't lean on the glass" and "don't touch" signs.  This place actually offers the kids an outlet for their desire to touch things.

We love this place and can't wait to go back whenever we come to visit Lake Winnipesaukee.